


it's a new soundtrack; i could dance to this beat

by coruscatingcatastrophe



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Danny Phantom, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Anxiety, Developing Relationship, Friendship, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Insecurity, M/M, Some romance if you squint, Will Solace-centric, also there are ghosts, but like i think its only a little bit of angst, his new friends help him even when they don't realize it, idk if thats a real tag but it is now, isn't that what we're all thinking though, lots of friendship - Freeform, sorry frank, the ghost thing is pretty subtle though, will deals with quite a bit of that, will thinks nico is pretty through this entire thing, yeah so the gang is pretty much all here except for frank
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25436686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coruscatingcatastrophe/pseuds/coruscatingcatastrophe
Summary: Sighing, he slumps back in his seat, but when he looks at Will again, his smile is unexpectedly genuine. “Well, welcome to Half-Blood High, my dude,” he says. “Home of the mighty pegasi. You’re gonna fit right in.”Strange thing is, with the confident way that Percy says it, Will can almost believe him.-In which Will is the unintentionally mega-angsty new kid who just wants to keep his new friends and also admire Nico di Angelo at every given opportunity, Nico smiles more than in probably any other solangelo fic you've ever read, Percy won't stop telling ghost jokes, Will's dad and siblings are the best, and friendship can be wild and confusing, but it's also pretty great, too.
Relationships: Apollo & Will Solace, Austin Lake & Will Solace, Kayla Knowles & Will Solace, Nico di Angelo/Will Solace, Percy Jackson & Will Solace
Comments: 20
Kudos: 157





	it's a new soundtrack; i could dance to this beat

**Author's Note:**

> so i was binging danny phantom earlier this week and was like: hey what would make a great danny phantom au? soLANGELO. and then proceeded to make this an angsty high school au with only slight danny phantom vibes. so uh, here's this. it also hasn't been edited aside from a brief and not-very-thorough spellcheck, but i hope there aren't too many mistakes and that you enjoy regardless? 
> 
> also, so there's no confusion: whenever there's texting, will's are the only texts that don't have a name above them. cool? cool. happy reading!

The vastness of Half-Blood High looms like a medieval castle in a storybook—you know, the kind with towers and terraces and a menacing dragon looming over the whole thing, ready to swoop in and devour unworthy peasants at a moment’s whim? (It doesn’t  _ actually  _ look like a castle—it looks like a normal, somewhat-fancier-than-normal high school—but that is neither here nor there. The point is it  _ looms.) _

Will Solace stands on the sidewalk, looking up at the school with the kind of nerves he’s never felt before clawing at his throat. It’s not that he wasn’t aware of it before, but it’s still extremely upsetting to be reminded that  _ he  _ is the unworthy peasant, here. 

At his side, Austin’s hand comes down on his shoulder so hard that he jumps. “Well, this is it,” he says, in his usual monotone voice, in his usual monotone way. Will has been here for two weeks and he  _ still  _ doesn’t think he’s ever seen his half-brother smile. “Half-Blood High. You’re a junior, so your classes are gonna be on the third floor. And I’ve taken a look at your schedule, you have Professor Euryale, which means you’re probably, most definitely gonna die. If you don’t, I guess I’ll see you right back here at three.” 

Will has to fight very hard not to whimper as his brother disappears.  _ Thanks for the comfort,  _ he doesn’t say, because he’s not sure if they’ve reached a point where he can be openly sarcastic, and also because Austin is already gone. 

He takes another look up at the school building, looming and glooming as ever, and takes a deep breath to center himself. Setting his shoulders back, lifting his chin, he reminds himself:  _ new place, new you. You are not going to be the same little puddle of crying nerves you were back in Texas. And anyway, this is fine. This is  _ good.  _ How hard can settling into a new school be, anyway?  _

  
  


_____

  
  


The answer to that question, Will gets immediately. Even with the nice guidance counselor’s assistant, Juniper, showing him to his locker before classes, he’s almost immediately dizzied by how  _ big  _ this place is. There are so many people everywhere, crawling all over the place like ants, and it’s so  _ loud  _ and  _ busy  _ and Will can’t help thinking that things were never quite this loud and busy back in Texas. Not that he’d made the decision to come live in New York because he wanted it to be like Texas—he reminds himself that he  _ knew  _ things were going to be a lot different, and that different is, in fact, a good thing—but it’s still so hard to be in a new place where the lockers have a fingerprint lock and all of the teachers are addressed by  _ professor  _ for some obscure reason.  __

Still, Will resolves himself to get it together and function like a normal seventeen-year-old. He makes it through all of one class before that determination slips away and leaves him, quite literally, struggling to pick up all of the miscellaneous books and papers that have fallen out of his hands because he was too anxious to put them back in his backpack before. There are people side-stepping all around him and talking over him, and probably no one is paying him any attention but he’s still so worried that someone is  _ looking  _ at him, and that just makes his fingers fumble even more, and oh no, now his eyes are getting blurry—

A hand reaches, before his own can, for one of the fliers that had drifted a couple feet away. It reaches to push that piece of brutally fluorescent orange paper back into his space, and Will follows that hand to a lanky, olive-toned arm, and then the sleeve of a black T-shirt, and then—

Will’s mouth goes dry.  _ Holy . . .  _ the stern face of his mother cuts him off before he can finish the thought. He switches tracks, and this thought is at least safe in his head, because his mother may care about swearing but she never was able to tell when he was thinking like  _ this. They don’t make boys like that in Texas.  _

Shoulder-length, dark hair like tendrils of ink that could pull you in like the comforting hand of a good book and never release you. Even darker eyes, like pools of coffee or a starless, moonless night sky. A smile brighter than the stars  _ or  _ moon, and he has dimples, which means that Will is pretty much done for. 

“You definitely don’t want to join the wrestling club here,” Pretty Boy says with a quirk of his mouth, and Will has to visibly fight not to just stare at it and try to figure out what he’s talking about. “It’s led by Clarisse La Rue, and she chews up and spits out newbies like wads of gum. I’d suggest that instead, you check out art. Or maybe debate? How good are you at arguing?” 

“Bad,” Will confesses immediately, and his gaze snags on that piece of orange paper as Pretty Boy laughs.  _ Oh,  _ he realizes, even as the sound of light, airy laughter floats in and out of his ears like something musical. Wrestling club flier. Someone shoved it into his hands as he was leaving first period. 

“Well, there’s something for everyone,” Pretty Boy goes on, and Will’s eyes flit back to him as he holds out a hand to help Will to his feet. Will takes it, trying very hard  _ not  _ to focus on how warm his hand is, and trying not to worry that his own is definitely super clammy. It doesn’t work—his brain is already endless trains of  _ oh no what if he thinks my hand is gross, what if it’s super sweaty and he’s pretending not to notice because he’s nice but he definitely notices, what if he never talks to me again because he hates people with sweaty hands and he tells everyone to stay away from me because I have sweaty hands, why didn’t I wipe my hand first, why didn’t I— _

“I’m Nico di Angelo,” Pretty Boy introduces himself, completely oblivious to Will’s internal spiral. “And I’ve never seen you around here, so I’m assuming you’re new. You are . . . ?” 

“Will Solace,” Will says, and then freezes as his brain glitches again, doubling back to make sure he said the right name and not, he doesn’t know, Bill Wallace or something. But Pretty Boy _ —Nico— _ he reminds himself, just smiles again. 

“Well, Will Solace,”—Will lets go of that anxious breath he was unaware he was holding—“I’ve gone here for all of my high school career, but I still remember how big the place can seem at first. I’d say I’m pretty qualified to show you around, if you need a hand . . . ?” 

Will glances around, to where he realizes the halls are slowly emptying as people make their way to their next classes, and he has no idea where he’s supposed to go next. “Please,” he says, trying not to sound as desperate as he feels, and failing. But Nico politely doesn’t say anything about it, just rocks back on his heels and nods. “Where you headed?” 

“Um,” Will scrambles through his memory—he’d memorized his schedule immediately when he’d gotten it earlier in the week, and he’s grateful for that because he’d probably never be able to find where the paper with his schedule printed on it went—and after a moment, is relieved to come up with, “English 350 with Professor Blofis.” 

“Oh, perfect. Me too,” Nico says easily, and sounds genuinely pleased, and Will is mentally screaming. 

He follows wordlessly after Nico, hands clutched tightly around his books to keep them from slipping again, only to stand nervously in the doorway when Nico steps over the threshold. He’s scanning the room anxiously, looking for an empty seat, until Nico realizes he’s no longer behind him and glances back curiously. “You coming?” 

“Um—” Will shifts on his feet, “I mean, I don’t want to bother you—” and he doesn’t know what it means when some kind of understanding dawns in Nico’s face. 

“Come on,” he says, and nods his head towards the back, and without even consciously making the decision, Will’s feet follow. 

There are two empty seats in the back, and Nico collapses into the one next to a punk-looking kid with his feet on the desk, boredly turning the page of a paperback. He flickers his gaze to the side, sees Nico, and immediately brightens. “Thank  _ gods  _ you’re finally here, quick I need you to tell me the ending of this book before I implode—” and then notices Will uncomfortably perching on his own seat and pauses. “Who’s your new friend?” 

“Percy, Will. Will, Percy,” Nico makes the introduction with a swift hand gesture, and then reaches out for the book. “Give it.” 

Percy obeys, and as Nico starts flipping through the pages he peers around him to look at Will, curious. Will, still extremely uncomfortable, doesn’t know what to do but look back at him. Percy’s eyes are a piercing shade of sea green, almost unnaturally bright in this lighting. 

“You a new kid?” he says, and Will fidgets nervously before nodding, conscious of the way Percy’s eyes flash as he glances at Nico with a quirk of his brow, then back at him. “Interesting . . .” he muses, then says, “So where you from?” 

“Texas.” Will’s throat feels very dry. He wishes he’d brought a bottle of water, but he’d gotten nervous this morning and decided that people at this school probably didn’t allow bottled water in class. A stupid thing to worry over now, as his gaze catches on the innocent bottle of SmartWater on the corner of Percy’s desk. The goldfish on the side eyes Will with mocking scorn. 

“A cowboy, huh?” Percy’s mouth quirks amusedly. “Did you live on a farm?” 

Nico, in the middle of whatever he’s doing with Percy’s book, pauses abruptly. “Oh my  _ gods,  _ Percy,” he says, sounding somewhere between horrified and amused but mostly horrified. “You can’t just ask someone if they lived on a farm just because they’re from Texas.” 

“Well, uh,” Will scratches the back of his neck, wondering why he feels so sheepish, “I actually did? I mean, not everyone in Texas lives on a farm, but I . . . did?”  _ You already said that, idiot.  _ But he thinks he must not have messed up too badly at trying to speak like a normal human being, because Percy slams his hand onto his desk with a validated: “HA!” 

A couple of people in the room glance back at them at the noise, and Will tries his hardest to turn invisible while Percy smiles glibly. That is, until the man at the front of the room clears his throat and gives Percy a Look, and Percy’s smile fades a little. Sighing, he slumps back in his seat, but when he looks at Will again, his smile is unexpectedly genuine. “Well, welcome to Half-Blood High, my dude,” he says. “Home of the mighty pegasi. You’re gonna fit right in.” 

Strange thing is, with the confident way that Percy says it, Will can almost believe him. 

  
  


_____

  
  


The cafeteria is another realm of panic all on its own. Will is infinitely grateful that he’d stumbled into Nico and subsequently Percy, because if he had to navigate his way around here all on his own, he thinks he’d actually die from stress. As it is, he follows the other two boys as they weave easily around a maze of tables, again towards the back of the room. He’s beginning to think he’s befriended a couple of delinquents—he wonders for a moment what his mother would say, before reminding himself that he doesn’t care. And anyway, Will doesn’t judge. He thinks, even, that he could easily mold himself into the delinquent scene. He could buy a leather jacket and  _ maybe  _ get a tattoo; he draws the line at drugs, because drugs are  _ so _ bad for you, but he decides that if his new friends are into drugs, then he will not judge them. Because they’ve been nice to him so far, and it would be rude to judge people who are nice to you, even if they engage in questionable, most definitely harmful bodily activities. 

He’s so set in his made-up mind that it’s a shock when they reach what Will assumes is their destination, and . . . it is not at all what he was expecting. 

For one thing, he counts _ —one two three four . . .  _ five heads, five is a lot, but the strange thing is almost  _ none  _ of them look like they belong together. Looking at this bunch, Will is so, so confused, because there’s a jock-y blond guy in a varsity jacket holding hands with a punk girl who could very easily be Percy’s twin sister, and across from them is a girl in an orange T-shirt who looks like she hasn’t brushed her hair in a couple years complaining to a guy in suspenders who’s  _ covered  _ in grease, and then there’s the terrifying girl at the head who’s wearing a blazer and who could say she’s the president of the United States and Will would believe her, no questions asked. 

“Hey guys,” Percy says easily, flopping down into the empty seat beside the girl in the T-shirt. Nico follows, glancing over his shoulder and indicating for Will to take the seat next to him. Will does so silently, carefully setting his lunch down, and tries not to flinch away from the hoard of interested eyes that land on him. Percy takes it upon himself to introduce him. “This is Will. He’s new and he’s from Texas, he  _ did  _ grow up on a farm, and he’s our friend now so be nice to him.”

“No way.” The guy covered in grease sits up out of his slouch, and Will feels supremely uncomfortable beneath the guy’s slightly-manic gaze. One of his eyebrows is singed.  _ “I’m  _ from Texas, too. The heart of Houston, though, no farms in sight. But close enough. I’m Leo.” 

“Will,” Will says automatically, and then flushes in horror. “Uh—you already knew that though.” Leo laughs, but strangely it doesn’t feel mean, and then starts pointing around the table to make introductions. “So there’s my boy Jason and my girl Piper, and this is Annabeth, and Scary Reyna,” the girl at the head of the table rolls her eyes, “and you know Percy and Nico I’m assuming. There’s some more people, but I think they’re held up in club activities or whatever nonsense, so for now we’re the only people that are important.” 

Will’s heart pounds with another bout of subtle anxiety _ —oh no, there’s  _ more?—but before he can spiral down into it, the girl that he thinks is Annabeth (he’s so terrible with names, he frets, how is he going to survive here?) groans and collapses face-down into her textbook. 

“You okay?” Percy says, and reaches out to rub her back comfortingly. She grumbles unintelligibly, and he nods like he understands. Then he glances at Will and whispers conspiratorially, “She didn’t get her morning coffee this morning because she was running late.” 

Annabeth sits up then, eyes flashing pools of gray fire, as she glares at Percy. “Yeah, and  _ whose  _ fault is that, again?” 

“I have no idea,” he says airily, and she scowls. Will decides he never wants to be on the receiving end of that scowl. 

Across the table, punk-girl (Piper?) snaps her fingers to get his attention. “Give me your phone,” she demands, but with the sort of smile that makes Will’s mouth go dry as he realizes:  _ woah, she’s pretty.  _ And then he wonders how it’s possible for one school to have so many beautiful people, and she’s still smiling at him, and Will is helpless when pretty people smile at him so he hands his phone over without a single question. He watches as she types into it for a good minute, nods with an air of satisfaction, and passes it back to him. 

When he looks at it, he sees that a handful of numbers have been added to his contacts, and he’s now part of some group chat called **_THE REAL_** **_GHOSTBUSTERS._** He quirks an eyebrow before he can help it, wondering at the name, and when he glances back up, Piper is still smiling. She shrugs when she catches his gaze. 

“If we get annoying—and we definitely will—you can just silence the chat. That’s what Nico did, anyway.” At his side, Nico shrugs, like,  _ what can you do about it?  _ “But everyone who is part of the group must be part of the group chat. That’s rule number one.” 

Curiously, Will asks, “Are there a lot of rules?” and Piper’s eyes flash with something that might be amused, but is definitely more than a little secretive. 

“You could say that. But in time, you’ll figure out that they’re all pretty easy to follow.” 

And just like that, Will has a whole gang of friends and no clue how he’s gotten this far. It’s his first day. Shouldn’t he be getting labeled as New Kid and being shoved into lockers and making a general fool of himself, like the picture he’s spent the last two weeks building up in his head? 

Well, anyway. Will isn’t going to complain. Today is going much, much better than he anticipated, and he’s never been one to question his blessings. 

  
  


_____

  
  


“How was your first day, Will?” Will’s dad asks that night at dinner. Austin says they don’t eat dinner together every night, but sometimes when Apollo is home he likes to make a point of it. It’s just the four of them—Apollo, Will, Austin, and Kayla—but somehow dinner with them feels infinitely more comfortable than family dinners (an obligation every night) ever were back home. Or, not his home anymore, Will supposes. He hates the way that his heart twinges at the thought. 

In his pocket, his phone emits a sequence of pings, and Will stiffens immediately in horror, ready to be berated. But Apollo just keeps smiling that casual, unbothered smile that Will can see only a tiny bit of himself in, and Kayla and Austin are much more interested in their debate over what constitutes appropriate pizza toppings, so Will forcibly relaxes his shoulders and remembers that he was asked a question. 

“Um, well, it was—” 

_ Ping! Ping! Ping ping ping! _

Apollo raises an eyebrow. “Already wildly popular, I see.” 

“Um.” Will’s tongue feels heavy in his mouth. “I’m sorry, sir, I forgot to turn off my phone—” 

Apollo waves a flippant hand. “Please, you know how I feel about formalities in this house. I don’t call you William, you don’t call me  _ sir.  _ And I don’t care if you have your phone at the table. It’s a miracle that I have teenagers that are willing to have dinner with me at all.” 

“Oh. Okay.” Will doesn’t know quite how to react to that. And then his phone sounds again, and Apollo nods his head, and after a moment of internal debate, Will reaches into his pocket and unlocks his phone. 

**seaweed brain:**

**(7:14 PM)** **_hey, hey will_ **

**(7:14 PM)** **_ive got a joke 4 u_ **

**Wise Girl:**

**(7:15 PM)** **_Oh no._ **

**BeautyQueen:**

**(7:15 PM)** **_Percy dont. You’re going to run off the new kid and I likew him._ **

**(7:15 PM)** **_*like_ **

**seaweed brain:**

**(7:16 PM)** **_pfft no i wont. ppl love my jokes_ **

**(7:16 PM)** **_will r u there_ **

Will blinks down at his screen, unsure for a moment of how to respond. It feels a little bit like he’s not supposed to be here, but that’s stupid because Percy obviously wouldn’t be addressing him specifically if he didn’t want him to answer. After a moment, he hesitantly types out a reply. 

**(7:19 PM)** **_Um, yeah, I’m here._ **

The reply is so immediate that Will almost jumps. 

**seaweed brain:**

**(7:19 PM)** **_oh no it’s still ur normal name quick we have to give u a name_ **

Will blinks. He has no idea what to say to that at all, and before he can even think of one his phone vibrates again. 

**seaweed brain has changed your name to cowboy**

**seaweed brain:**

**(7:20 PM)** **_there all better_ **

**(7:21 PM)** **_kk, r u ready for this??_ **

**(7:21 PM)** **_I guess so._ **

**seaweed brain:**

**(7:22 PM)** **_okay_ **

**(7:22 PM)** **_..._ **

**(7:22 PM)** **_what kind of ghost has the best hearing_ **

**SuperNerd:**

**(7:23 PM)** **_Aw come on Percy, you could tell any joke_ **

**(7:23 PM)** **_Literally any joke_ **

**(7:24 PM)** **_And you chose this one_ **

**seaweed brain:**

**(7:24 PM)** **_SHHH!_ **

**(7:24 PM)** **_will?? any guesses??_ **

Will thinks about it for a moment, and then decides that no, he does not. 

**(7:25 PM)** **_I have no idea._ **

**seaweed brain:**

**(7:25 PM)** **_…_ **

**(7:26 PM)** **_the EARiest!!_ **

**(7:26 PM)** **_get it ‘cause ears??_ **

**BeautyQueen:**

**(7:27 PM)** **_groans_ **

**(7:27 PM)** **_I am so sorry for him Will_ **

**Wise Girl:**

**(7:27 PM)** **_I’d like for you to know that Percy is not a true reflection of our friend group._ **

**seaweed brain:**

**(7:28 PM)** **_hey! ruude_ **

Will has to bite his lip so that he won’t smile like an idiot at his phone. He glances up surreptitiously, just to make sure it’s still okay that he’s not paying attention—Kayla and Austin are still arguing, and Apollo is now on his own phone, and he takes just a moment to let himself feel how  _ weird  _ this all is—before he sends off his next reply. 

**(7:30 PM)** **_It’s okay. Don’t worry Percy, I thought your joke was great._ **

**seaweed brain:**

**(7:30 PM)** **_!! see!! will thinks my joke is great!! thAnk u will, u validate me_ **

Will can’t hold back his smile as he puts his phone back down, remembering his abandoned slice of pizza.  _ Yeah, things are weird,  _ he decides,  _ but I think that I like it.  _

He only realizes that night, as he’s getting ready for bed, that it’s the first time he can remember smiling in a very long time. 

  
  


_____

  
  


Two weeks ago at around ten o’clock PM (Central Standard Time), Will had turned his pockets inside-out and found just enough change to make a call at a payphone. 

“Dad?” He’d been biting back his tears, hand trembling around the phone at his ear when Apollo had picked up, his voice almost overwhelmingly chipper, and he’d taken a deep breath so his voice wouldn’t shake and said, “I need your help.” 

He’d explained the entire situation and, embarrassingly, had ended up breaking down a couple times before he finally finished. Apollo had been silent on the other end of the line, and Will had been afraid for a moment that he had hung up on him, and then he’d calmly said: “Do you have a way to get to the nearest airport?” 

Will had at least remembered to grab his wallet in his haste to leave; it was somewhere in the bottom of his backpack, but he was fairly certain he had enough cash in there for a bus ticket. “I think so.” 

“Just focus on getting there,” his dad had said—a man who Will has known mainly through phone calls and a handful of visits scattered throughout his seventeen years up to that point—and he’d promised, “I’ll take care of the rest.” 

And now Will is sitting in the guidance counselor’s office, in a new school that’s far outside his realm of comfort, being told that,  _ “If you want to talk about it, I am absolutely here for you. This is a safe space, Will.”  _

Will doesn’t want to talk about it. Where Will is from, talking about anything vaguely emotional—if you’re a guy, anyway—is just fuel for people to make fun of you. Will is trying to start over. He doesn’t want to be put back under the same labels that brought him here in the first place. 

So he shakes his head. The guidance counselor, a warm woman named Hestia who honestly only looks like a freshly-graduated high schooler herself, nods understandingly. 

“Alright, then. How about we talk about the resources offered here at Half-Blood High? It says here that you’re dyslexic. Have you thought about joining a study group?” 

“Um.” Will’s tongue feels too thick in his mouth. “Not . . . not really? I mean, I handle it fine. I’m a hard worker.” 

Hestia hums. Not a disapproving  _ hmm,  _ like his mother’s go-to reaction to anything; more like she’s just taking it in, filing it away.  _ Hmm . . .  _ “I don’t doubt it. Your grades are remarkable. But I understand that sometimes it can become a little much, doing it all by yourself. Just keep in mind here at Half-Blood High, our goal is to help our students not only pass, but thrive. If you change your mind, or if there’s anything you find yourself needing a hand in, my door is open, alright?” 

“Okay.” Will fidgets with the strap of his backpack; she passes a folder filled, undoubtedly, with learning resources and pamphlets, across her desk to him. He takes it, slips it into the bag carefully, and says, “Can I go now?” 

“Yes,” Hestia nods, her smile still so pleasant even though Will is probably being incredibly rude, and stands to walk him out. “Have a good afternoon, Will.” 

“You too,” Will tells her, relieved to finally be back out in the hall, and slumps against the wall as soon as her door closes again. He doesn’t get to stay like that for long, because then he hears footsteps and his eyes fly back open. He straightens his posture, turning his head to suss out the newcomer, and sees—Nico di Angelo. 

“Oh, hey Will,” he says easily; he looks kind of tired, Will notes, a slight cast of shadow beneath his eyes, but other than that he looks as beautiful as every other time Will’s seen him so far. He mentally kicks himself for the thought, and smiles back until he remembers where he is. Where he just was. “Uh—hi, hey, Nico. I was just—” 

But he gives up trying to find an excuse before he can really start; they’re the only people in this hallway, and he’s standing outside a door covered in posters that say things like: “ _ There is only one success: to be able to live your life in your own way,”  _ and  _ “First, put on your own oxygen mask.”  _

“Talking to Hestia? Yeah, she’s awesome,” Nico says when Will offers no further explanation, and completely taking him by surprise. “Our school really lucked out in the guidance counselor department. I was actually just coming by to see her.” He gestures with a hand at the slogan-decorated door, and Will blinks at him. 

“Oh . . . cool.” He doesn’t really know what else to say. 

Nico flashes a smile that very-nearly sparkles, and Will’s heart might stop for a second or three. “Yeah. I’ll see you tomorrow?” 

“Um, yeah. Yes. You . . . will,” Will says, feels himself fumble with his words, and flushes. “Bye, Nico.” 

He’s already starting down the hall before Nico can respond, but he still glances over his shoulder when Nico calls back, “Bye, Will.” 

Smile unconsciously tugging at his lips, Will waves at him. Nico waves back and then disappears through Hestia’s door, and Will is glad that he looks away when he does, so that he  _ doesn’t  _ see the way that he’s so dazzled by Nico’s smile that he runs into a wall. 

  
  


_____

  
  


**seaweed brain:**

**(4:17 PM)** **_why are there gates around cemeteries_ **

**BeautyQueen:**

**(4:18 PM)** **_percy enough with the ghost jokes_ **

**(4:21 PM)** **_I don’t know, why?_ **

**seaweed brain:**

**(4:23 PM)** **_i am so glad u asked, william_ **

**(4:23 PM)** **_because people are dYING to gET IN_ **

  
  


_____

  
  


Will has plans this weekend. 

Now, admittedly, he almost did not. When Nico had asked him at lunch if he wanted to come hang out and study at his house on Friday night, Will’s nerves had caught in his throat and almost pushed him into saying:  _ no, sorry, I actually have to help my brother clean his saxophone.  _ But then Percy’s ears had perked up and he’d said, “Study hangout at Nico’s with Will? Hell yeah!” and Will had been so startled by how excited Percy was that he’d missed the way Nico and the entire rest of the table had glared at the green-eyed boy. 

And he couldn’t say no after Percy had shown  _ that  _ much enthusiasm, and really, his dad’s been telling him that he should get out and do something fun since he got here. Will doesn’t have much of a concept of  _ fun  _ except for reading medical textbooks in his spare time, and while he thoroughly enjoys it, he’s fairly certain that this is not normal teenage behavior. So he says yes without really thinking too much about it, and then he forgets about it entirely until Friday afternoon when he’s staring at himself in the mirror and freaking out because he has no idea what he’s supposed to wear. 

“Kayla!” he calls out in a panic, flitting through all of the shirts in his closet for the third time, because he’s positive that the blue button-down he has on is  _ not right,  _ somehow. “Kayla, I need your help with something!” 

His sister comes running, and by the look on her face Will thinks he’d had her halfway convinced he was being murdered, and he feels bad about that, he does, but—

“I don’t know what to wear,” he frets, and watches her worry drop drastically, until she squints at him and notices how off his breathing is. 

“Hey, dude, calm down,” she says cautiously, and nudges him in the shoulder until he backs up to sit on the bed. “What’s going on? I really don’t think wardrobe uncertainty is worth having a panic attack over.” 

“Nico invited me to his house to study,” Will explains, after a moment of carefully measured breaths. And then he repeats, because  _ this  _ is the important part, “And I don’t know what to wear.” 

Something clicks in Kayla’s brain, because she nods slowly. “Got it. You’re freaking out because he’s cute.” 

Will makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat.  _ “Kayla.”  _

“What? There’s nothing wrong with that,” Kayla says offhandedly, and then she pauses again. “Oh.  _ Oh.”  _ And then she sits down next to him on the bed, nudges him with her shoulder, and sighs. “Will. There’s nothing wrong with that.” 

Will can’t quite look at her. “He’s really nice. And he let me be part of his friend group . . . I think we’re friends. I don’t want to mess it up and make him hate me, and if I don’t  _ dress  _ right—” He bites his lip, cutting himself off before he can spiral. Kayla sighs again, and Will feels kind of guilty for making her so exasperated, but he thinks she notices that on his face because she puts her hand on his shoulder and leaves it there. 

“Hey,” she says gently, “You said he’s really nice, right? Does he seem like the kind of person who wouldn’t like you just for not wearing pink on Wednesdays?” 

“Um.” Will thinks about it for a moment. Honestly, he doesn’t think he’s met a single Regina George at Half-Blood High so far. “No?” he ventures. 

“Alright then.” Kayla nods, the matter evidently settled, and gets up to go back over to his closet. 

“Look, I’ve seen Nico and his gang around. I’m in archery club with Reyna, you know. And given what I’ve seen, they probably wouldn’t bat an eye if you showed up wearing a trash bag with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and plastic bottles slathered all over it. Which, by the way, their friend Rachel did once.” She finds something that she likes, Will guesses, because she pulls it off a hangar and tosses it at his head. He narrowly catches it, sees the familiar lettering of Columbia University, and glances at her with question mark eyes. 

“It’s comfortable enough for studying and telling enough that it’ll give him an excuse to ask you where you want to go to college, and you can spill your little nerdy medical heart to him. Plus, hello, it’s October. It’s freezing outside. Make sure you wear a jacket, too.” He puts it on and she gives him a once-over, nods her approval. “Keep the jeans. They really show off your legs, which are arguably your best feature.” 

Will flushes, but he nods. As she’s leaving, he says, “Hey, Kayla?” 

She pauses in the doorway and looks back at him, green bangs falling into her eyes. Will finds himself suddenly so grateful that of everyone who could be his half-sister, it’s her. “Thank you.” 

She smiles. “Anytime,” she says, and the thing is, Will is pretty sure she means it. 

  
  


_____

  
  


A short girl with curly hair opens the door, takes one look at Will, and calls back into the house: “NICO! There’s a cute boy whom I do not know at the door!” She looks back at him with a flashing smile and steps aside to let him in. “You must be Will. Nice to meet you—I’m Hazel.” 

“Nico’s sister,” Will puts together—Nico’s mentioned her in passing a couple times, and she’s part of the group chat—and she nods. “It’s, um, also nice to meet you,” he fumbles, and she smiles again. She looks nothing like Nico in appearance, but when she smiles, Will sees the exact same warmth. 

She leads him further into the house until they get to what at a glance is revealed to be the living room; everything looks ridiculously expensive, so it’s not unlike his dad’s place, and there’s Nico in the center of it all, talking on the phone and gesturing with his free hand. Percy and Piper are here too, slouched into one of the massive couches and fighting each other for the control of a Nintendo Switch. 

Nico looks up when Will enters the room and pulls his phone away to cover the speaker. “Will. What kind of pizza do you want?” 

“Uh,” Will shifts on his feet, put on the spot, and glances at Hazel like she’ll help him out, but she’s moved over to collapse on Piper’s other side. “I don’t care?” 

Nico nods, then returns the phone to his ear. “Yeah, another extra cheese. Can I also get—” 

“Oh, hey,” someone says from behind him, and Will jumps, turning to find Jason standing there. He’s smiling—Will has yet to see any of these people  _ not  _ smiling—already shrugging off his coat as he nods to the free couch. “You wanna sit?” 

So Will does, and true to Kayla’s word, he gets almost immediately swept up into a conversation about colleges and the pros and cons of ivy leagues. Nico is just getting off the phone when he briefly alludes to his aspirations of becoming a doctor, and he’s not quite sure what it means when Jason’s eyes light up with interest and he goes: “Hey,  _ Nico.  _ Will wants to be a doctor. How cool is that?” 

“Very cool,” Nico says, also sounding surprisingly interested when he asks, “What kind of doctor?” 

“I, uh, I haven’t decided. I mean, kids are fun so maybe pediatrics, but I’ve been doing a lot of reading on cardiology and being a heart surgeon sounds like, the ultimate superhero job to me, so . . .” Will realizes he’s babbling and flushes. “Sorry, that probably sounds pretty lame, now that I think about it.” 

“No way,” Nico says with a soft smile, “Not all heroes wear capes, right?” 

“Uh—right.” Will’s mouth is suspiciously dry, and he looks away from those dark eyes because it’s  _ so much.  _

“So I guess that means you’re pretty smart, huh?” Jason says, and suddenly the conversation feels about ten degrees more uncomfortable. It’s not Jason’s fault on any part—it’s just . . . 

“Oh. I wouldn’t say that,” Will says, shifting on his hands, gaze lowering to his shoes. A lot of thoughts are swirling in his head, mostly thoughts of how back home,  _ Will Solace  _ and  _ smart  _ weren’t words that went together. Even his teachers, the people who  _ graded  _ his work, still doubted and underestimated him, and no matter how many times he proved them wrong, the names stuck. 

“Well, I totally would,” Jason says, and then he sits up and claps his hands, gathering everyone’s attention. “And  _ speaking of,  _ we have studying to start on before the pizza gets here, everyone. Textbooks, open.” 

There’s a chorus of grumbles from Percy and Piper, and Hazel pops up from the couch to leave. “Have fun,” she says genuinely, and with a wave of her fingers, she’s gone. 

“Annabeth and Leo couldn’t make it tonight because they’re working on a—thing,” Nico announces to the room at large as he’s cracking open a biology textbook. Biology is a class they share, and is also Will’s favorite. He carefully takes his own book out of his bag, opening it to the unit their class is currently on, with all of his sticky notes pressed into the margins. 

“Aw, man. Hey Jason, can I borrow your trig notes then? My dyslexia was acting up today so mine are a jumbled mess of nonsense and Illuminati doodles,” Percy says, and Will freezes for a moment.  _ Did he just say—?  _

“Sure, man.” Jason passes over a notebook. Percy’s dyslexia comment is not brought up again. Will feels slightly dizzy.

Time passes by surprisingly quickly, after that. Will is used to studying being a long, dragging process: poring over textbooks alone in his room with total silence, because otherwise he can’t really get anything into his head for a long period of time. But Jason pulls out a stack of brightly colored flashcards, and they take turns passing them around to quiz one another, and Jason asks if he can take a look at Will’s sticky notes and Will says yes, and then Nico is getting up to get the pizza and they’re calling for a break—and already, he feels as if he’s made more progress than he does in an entire night by himself. 

“So, Will,” Piper asks when they’ve settled around with their slices; Jason’s migrated to sit next to her, and Percy is on Nico’s other side, and it all feels surprisingly . . . familiar, somehow. Even if this is the first  _ anything  _ like this that Will’s ever been a part of. “What brings you to New York, anyway?” 

“Oh, um.” Will lowers his gaze to his pizza, picking at a string of cheese dripping over the side. He can feel everyone’s eyes on him, waiting curiously. “I came to live with my dad,” he says—it’s truthful without being  _ too much,  _ he thinks. 

“This far into the year?” Percy quirks an eyebrow. Will just nods, leaving it there, heart pounding a little too fast beneath the attention. After a moment of terse silence, the conversation brushes past him and onto someone else, and he breathes a little sigh of relief. 

The night goes on. Honestly, Will kind of really has fun. At some point the studying trickles off into random floating snatches of dialogue, and Piper decides to put on a movie, so they’re halfway having a legitimate conversation and they’re halfway reciting the entire script of  _ Shrek.  _ Percy collapses onto Nico’s shoulder during the scene where Fiona is talking about being rescued by her true love, batting his eyelashes all dramatically, and Nico rolls his eyes and shoves him off. “Ow, Neeks,” he pouts, but isn’t deterred for long before he declares, “You  _ know  _ you love me,” and returns to press a loud, smacking kiss onto the side of Nico’s head. 

Nico shoves him again and he falls to the ground, but Percy snatches onto his T-shirt and tugs him down with him, laughing. They lay there, cackling on the floor until Piper throws a couple pillows at them to shut them up, and Will watches the whole thing with a curious sort of puzzlement going on in his head. He looks at Nico and then at Percy, and then back at Nico, and then  _ back  _ at Percy, and realization dawns on him. Oh.  _ Oh.  _

Well, that makes sense, Will supposes. Nico is gorgeous—and so is Percy—and it . . . it  _ makes sense.  _ He barely knows either of them, but even he can already tell that they make sense. It’s possible that the tiniest twinge of disappointment prickles in his chest, but that’s neither here nor there. And really—as long as they’re happy, that’s what matters. 

“I hope you had a good time,” Nico says later, walking him to the door to let him back out into the unforgiving New York autumn night. His eyes are bright, and so is his smile, and Will thinks that he’s  _ definitely  _ the prettiest boy he’s ever seen. But he pushes the thought away, back into the corner it crept in from, and smiles back at him. When he answers, he’s being honest when he says: “I did.” 

  
  


_____

  
  


“This is why I hate biology,” Lou Ellen says, looking with distaste down at the frog sitting between them on the lab table. “You know, this goes against all of my morals and beliefs. How would a  _ human  _ feel if someone killed them and handed their body over to a group of adolescent students to take apart with torture devices?” 

“You know people still do that, right?” Will points out. He looks up from their worksheet at his lab partner—she’s got her purple braids tied on top of her head in a way that vaguely resembles some sort of spiky plant, and a matching purple frown curving down the corners of her mouth. “Like, when people die, they can donate their organs to medical schools or whatever and that’s how students . . . uh, study. It’s also how, historically, the human body was studied. Well, not until Andreas Vesalius really—before that doctors relied on applying the studies of animal dissection to humans, but—” Lou Ellen’s eyes have glazed over. Will stops mid-ramble. “Uh, anyway . . .” 

“I could never be a medical student,” Lou Ellen says, and shivers. “I am like, way too squeamish. This is why I’m an art person.” 

Will laughs lightly. “Well, then, you fill out the worksheet, and I’ll do all the nasty amphibian surgery stuff.” She’s pleased enough with this dividing of the work, and so they get started. Lou Ellen keeps up a pleasant stream of mindless chatter in-between filling out answers, and Will has to admit that he really likes knowing what he’s doing. He’d taken biology before in his freshman year, but when he’d gone to sign up for classes Hestia said he could take it again if he really wanted—and it would look good on pre-med school applications—so he’d jumped at the chance. He’s glad for it, too, because while he’d done fairly well freshman year, it had been a lot harder to focus on soaking in the information beyond passing the next test. Mainly because he was busy worrying about, well, other things—

Something comes flying toward him, and he’s not able to duck out of the way quickly enough. Something . . . oozes onto his shirt, and next to him, Lou Ellen emits a scream like she’s being murdered. 

“Oh my gods!” someone shouts in horror. Will looks down in confusion and notes that oh, there’s a rogue frog leg stuck to his shirt. 

“I am so,  _ so  _ sorry,” the same person who’d shouted—a kid who sits at the very front, most likely placed there by the professor to keep him out of trouble, not that that’d worked—rushes over to him, drawing the attention of the whole class. He’s curly-haired and wide-eyed with guilt, and while Will stands uncomfortably beneath everyone’s gazes, the kid reaches out to peel the frog leg off his shirt. The ooze remains. 

“So sorry,” the kid cries again. At the front of the room, Professor Triptolemus looks up with a sigh. “What did you do this time, Markowitz?” 

“Frog leg on the new kid,” someone else informs, and their professor rolls his eyes to the heavens, sighs, and says, “Why.  _ Why,  _ of all the teaching positions I could have chosen. Did I choose  _ biology?”  _

“That’s a question only you can answer,” the kid—Markowitz—quips, mouthing quirking into a smirk only to shrink beneath the professor’s gaze. “I, uh. I have an extra T-shirt in my locker. Can I take Will to go get it. . . . ?” 

“Make it quick,” Professor Trip says, and Markowitz turns back to Will with a smile pleading forgiveness. Will would like to not smell like dead frog for the rest of the day, so after a moment, he takes off his goggles and gloves and follows him out of the room. 

“Again, I can’t apologize enough. I meant for that to hit Lou Ellen—” the kid babbles as soon as the door shuts behind them, and Will stares at him, almost mystified. 

“Why were you trying to hit Lou Ellen with a frog leg?” 

“Oh, we’re in the middle of this prank war. If anyone asks, she  _ totally  _ started it—she did!” he says defensively, when Will raises a dubious eyebrow at him. 

“Anyway, I’m Cecil, and this is my locker.” They stop in front of one of the many nondescript lockers, the kid jams his thumb against the scanner, and the door pops open. 

“And you just . . . happen to have a spare T-shirt in your locker, why?” 

“Ah.” Cecil’s smile takes on a sheepish curve. “Let’s just say I make a lot of messes. Anyway, we’re about the same size, so I hope it fits. Don’t worry about getting it back to me, it’s just a regular school shirt. And again—I’m  _ so  _ sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Will says, holding the shirt out to assess the size before determining,  _ yes, it will fit.  _ “I’ve had worse things thrown at me. Better get back to class before Professor Trip flips out.” 

Cecil flashes him a grin that leaves him feeling slightly uneasy; Will is beginning to wonder if that’s just how he smiles naturally. “Right on. See ya, Solace.” 

“See you,” Will repeats, and as Cecil retreats back the way they came, Will goes the opposite direction, where he knows the nearest bathroom is. He’s just about to turn the corner when he hears a door opening; he peers his head around just enough to see, watching as Nico and Percy emerge from . . . the janitor’s closet. 

Straightening out their clothes, running their hands through their hair—Will might be from a small town just south of Austin, but he’s not an idiot. It’s not hard for him to conjecture what the two of them could possibly have been doing. Still, he suddenly feels incredibly flustered at the thought of running into them like this, so he ducks back around the corner and presses his back to the wall, holds his breath, and hopes they won’t come this way. 

“Well that was fun,” Percy says, familiar exuberance ringing in the empty hall until Nico shushes him, sounding unexpectedly annoyed. “I’m not in the mood, Percy—I’m about to miss a test, this is all  _ your fault—”  _

“Hey, I’m not the one who said I ‘had a feeling,’” Percy protests, and even without seeing him Will knows he’s making air quotes. A slight feeling of nausea passes over Will, unexpected and pressing enough that he misses whatever it is that Nico says next. 

Thankfully, their voices disappear a few moments later and, heaving a long sigh of relief, Will can finally dart down the hallway and into the bathroom to change his shirt. 

His chest feels suspiciously heavy in his chest as he’s changing into the bright orange T-shirt, and he stands there and looks at himself in the mirror for a long moment. “You’re being stupid,” he tells his reflection. “You’ve only been here a few weeks—you don’t get to feel sad about your new friends having lives outside of you. And you  _ definitely  _ don’t get to be jealous of their boyfriends.” 

But he  _ does  _ feel a little bit sad, and yeah, he thinks that thick feeling in his throat is jealousy. He lets his eyes burn for only a moment longer, acknowledging the feelings, and then forces himself to blink them back. “Get it together, Solace,” he whispers. 

By the time he’s made it back to class, he’s managed to convince himself that he’s pushed the image of Nico and Percy in a closet together out of his head completely. And even further, he’s stopped wishing that _he_ was the one with Nico, instead. 

  
  


_____

  
  


**seaweed brain:**

**(3:03 PM)** **_hey will. i’ve got another joke_ **

**(4:25 PM)** **_Is this also a ghost joke?_ **

**seaweed brain:**

**(4:29 PM)** **_...maybe_ **

**(4:30 PM)** **_you still wanna hear it?_ **

Will’s thumbs hover uncertainly over the keyboard. He thinks about just ignoring him, but . . .

**(4:32 PM)** **_Sure._ **

**seaweed brain:**

**(4:34 PM)** **_kk. why do ghosts love to ride elevators?_ **

**(4:35 PM)** **_I don’t know. Why do they?_ **

**seaweed brain:**

**(4:36 PM)** **_because it raises their spirits!!_ **

Will, in spite of himself, snorts. Then he sends a quick  _ haha,  _ turns off his phone, and tosses it into the corner of his bed. This is how Kayla finds him when she comes looking: wearing pajamas at four-thirty in the afternoon, cuddled up under his blankets and clutching a pillow. 

“Uh oh,” she says, and comes to perch at the end of his bed. “Bad day?” 

“No,” Will mutters. And then he thinks about it and changes his mind. He’s horrified when a sniffle tears out of him without his permission. Kayla waits. 

“I just,” he starts, and then stops to think. The thing is, he doesn’t even really  _ know  _ why he feels so sad. He thinks it’s a lot of things—it’s so  _ cold  _ in New York: he misses the sun, and his old bed with its kiddie superhero sheets, and his dog Orlando. He misses his monstrous little siblings and the smells of hay and horses and he even misses his mother, a little bit. He thinks he’s the kind of person who, no matter how old he gets, is never going to stop wanting his mama when he’s upset. Even though she hates him now. How pathetic is that?

He lets that thought roll around in his heart a little bit—and then it fetches up on one of the glass sides, hard, sending a flurry of tiny cracks all throughout it. And then he whispers, “My mother hates me”—and it shatters. 

His pillow is tugged out of his arms, and then he’s pulled up and into Kayla’s arms. He wonders briefly how she’s so strong for a twig-thin fourteen-year-old, but then he’s trying his hardest to stop sniffling against her shoulder. He’s seventeen years old—he shouldn’t be this emotional, he shouldn’t  _ care,  _ he shouldn’t—

The harder he tries not to cry, though, the more insistently the tears flow. So he resigns himself to them, presses his lips together so that he at  _ least  _ won’t devolve into sobbing territory, and closes his watery eyes until his shoulders stop shaking. 

And then, because of course that’s how this works,  _ this  _ is how Austin finds them: Will with his head tucked against their little sister’s shoulder, sniffling weakly because the way she’s running her fingers through his hair reminds him of the way his mama used to do when he was small. 

“Bad day?” he says, and strangely, Will thinks there’s something that sounds like sympathy in his voice. Austin usually doesn’t spare many emotions for anything outside of his music, so that’s—something. 

Will must look even more pathetic than he thought. 

“Go get your laptop,” Kayla says over Will’s head, “I think this is a movie-binging night.” 

Will sniffles again. “Can we watch  _ The Princess Bride?”  _

He feels more than hear’s Kayla sigh, but he can tell that it’s not really annoyed. “If we must.” 

They do watch  _ The Princess Bride.  _ And then  _ The Princess Diaries  _ (one and two) and  _ Ella Enchanted _ (because Will loves Anne Hathaway, okay?) He falls asleep about halfway through  _ The Devil Wears Prada,  _ smushed between his siblings on his bed, and in the morning he’ll hug them both for a really long time because they didn’t have to do that—after all, they may be blood-related, but they still barely know each other—and they’ll act all aloof and grumble,  _ “Whatever, that’s what siblings are for, let me go you sap,”  _ and this will be the first time Will realizes that he really, really loves them a lot. 

  
  


_____

  
  


**Nico di Angelo:**

**(12:21 PM)** **_Hey, do you want to hang out tonight?_ **

Will stares at the screen for a very long time to make sure he’s reading correctly. For all that he’s hung out with Nico since they’ve met, this is the first time Nico’s ever texted him directly . . . or that he’s ever seen him text at all. He carefully types out a reply, backspaces, starts over. He does this approximately six more times before he decides on one that’s good enough, and presses send before he can rethink it. 

**(12:39 PM)** **_Sure! Like with everyone?_ **

He tells himself not to be anxious, because that would be stupid, and he tells himself not to sit by his phone and wait for a text back, because that would be even more stupid. So he leaves his phone to go get a glass of water, and when he comes back, he casually clicks his phone on just to check the time. His heart flips when he sees that Nico’s already texted back. 

**Nico di Angelo:**

**(12:43 PM)** **_No, just with me, if that’s cool? I was thinking we could hang out at my place, watch a movie or play videogames or something. I’m not a big fan of going out on weekends._ **

Will blinks, wondering what that could mean. He doesn’t fret over his next text as much; just holds his breath and presses send.  **(12:45 PM)** **_Well, sure, sounds fun. But why not about going out on weekends? Is everything crowded or something?_ **

Nico’s reply is almost immediate, and somehow more puzzling.  **(12:46 PM)** **_You could say that. See you at 7:30?_ **

Will doesn’t hesitate.  **(12:46 PM)** **_Yes._ **

  
  


_____

  
  


This time when he rings the doorbell, Nico is the one who answers. 

He looks nice: he’s wearing a soft-looking gray sweater, his hair all fluffy and curling into his eyes. “Hi,” he says. 

“Hey,” Will says back, and can’t help the dorky smile that curls its way onto his face. “Thanks for inviting me over.” 

“Thanks for coming.” Nico closes the door behind him. “What kind of takeout do you like? I was going to ask you before, but completely blanked because—uh,” his face goes strangely pink, and he fidgets with the sleeve of his sweater before continuing on. “Never mind. How’s Thai?” 

“Sounds great,” Will says easily. He follows Nico into the living room as the other boy taps at his phone, noting how strangely quiet everything is when it isn’t filled with their other friends.  _ Their friends,  _ Will thinks—because that’s what they are, right? He and Leo complain to each other constantly about the weather here, in the sort of friends way that’s filled with melodrama and fake crying. Annabeth asks him about fascinating, yet disturbing medical facts over lunch to gross out the others, and Will obliges to see the way her gray eyes flash with the sort of camaraderie that comes from making the people around you suffer. He went with them to a football game last Friday to support Jason, and Piper made him get in the group photo and then tagged him on her Instagram (he got like two hundred new followers thanks to her, and it’s still so bizarre to him, even a week later). And Percy texts him like every single day, and it’s not even all dumb jokes. Sometimes he texts just to ask how Will’s day is going—and that’s the  _ nicest  _ thing, and Will can’t even really process how drastically his life has changed within the span of barely a couple months. 

Some days, he thinks of how much he feels like a liar, and he wants to self-combust from the guilt. He thinks that they probably, most definitely wouldn’t like him if they really knew him. He keeps waiting for them to figure that out. 

He’s getting tired of waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

“So, uh, where’s your family?” Will asks, to pull himself out of his mind. Nico’s off his phone now, making himself at home on the couch and patting the space next to him for Will to do the same. 

“Dad and Persephone—my stepmom—are at some fancy benefit thing. Hazel’s out with her boyfriend,” Nico explains, and Will nods because yeah, that makes sense. Part of him wants to ask, though, why Nico wanted to invite  _ him  _ over when he could have invited his boyfriend instead, but he doesn’t. Maybe he did invite Percy, but he was busy or something, so Will was the next-best company. 

Either way, it’s not really Will’s business. What  _ is  _ his business is that he’s here, and whether he has a dumb crush on Nico or not, he still  _ likes  _ him, and he still wants to be friends. He’ll get over his feelings, probably. Or he won’t, and he’ll die single and lonely with a house full of cats and the ghost of his mother saying:  _ “If only you were normal,”  _ still haunting him. 

Wow. That’s kind of dark. Will really needs to lighten up. 

“I was thinking,” Nico is saying slowly, and it’s only now that Will realizes he has the remote in his hand and a title pulled up. The other boy glances back at him questioningly, starts, “But if you want to watch something else—” 

“I  _ love  _ these movies,” Will blurts, with far more enthusiasm than he intended, and mentally cringes at himself. But Nico flashes an equally-excited smile in response, so Will figures it’s alright. Nico presses play, and the opening sequence for the first  _ Pirates of the Caribbean  _ movie begins. Will settles in, accepts the soft blanket Nico tosses to him, and wonders if  _ this  _ is what normal actually feels like. 

If so, he could get used to it. 

It’s over pineapple fried rice and red curry that Nico glances at him, a smile curving his mouth, and confesses, “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a pirate. I’m pretty sure these movies had a hand in that.”

Will thinks about telling him that he wanted to be a pirate until he learned what scurvy was, but he doesn’t do that. What he finds himself doing is a lot more telling about who he is as a person, and also infinitely more risky. And he doesn’t even know he’s going to do it until it’s out of his mouth—“When I was a kid, I was  _ super  _ into Orlando Bloom. I am definitely sure these movies are why.” 

Immediately after the words have left his mouth, he realizes what he’s done, and he feels his face blanch of all color.  _ Oh no, why did I say that, why did I tell him that, why didn’t I tell him the scurvy thing, that wouldn’t have been as awful as this, what if Nico thinks I’m creepy or gross or— _

He’s midway to cardiac arrest when he realizes that Nico isn’t staring in shock or horror; instead he’s nodding thoughtfully around a mouthful of red curry. “I get that. Orlando Bloom is hot as a pirate.” 

“Also just in general,” WIll blurts, because he’s apparently  _ lost all control of his mouth.  _ “He was in this really  _ atrocious  _ movie with Kirsten Dunst and they were like, the  _ only  _ good things about it. They still couldn’t save it, but I mean . . . they were still nice to look at, at least?” 

Nico laughs, hand flying up to cover his mouth, and Will thinks it might be the cutest thing he’s ever seen. “That’s one way to look on the bright side,” he says, and Will doesn’t tell him that nothing is as bright as his eyes reflecting the light of the TV, turning his irises to a kaleidoscope of colors. 

Will smiles wryly, and because they’re on the subject, he might as well go all-in. “I named my dog after him.” 

Nico grins at him. “That’s adorable.” 

His heart is pounding still, but he thinks that he isn’t afraid, anymore. He’s— _ excited,  _ maybe, to tell something like that to someone who doesn’t immediately look at him like he’s become a stranger. Someone who isn’t worth knowing. And he’s never told anyone about his dog. His mother had asked him why, at twelve years old when he had been gifted a golden retriever puppy for his birthday, why he would choose the name  _ Orlando,  _ of all names. Will just told her that he’d really like to go to Disney World someday. 

Nico opens his mouth, about to say something else, when suddenly light spills into the room and . . . Percy Jackson is standing there. Covered from head-to-toe in something . . . green. And slimy. 

When Will chances a look at Nico’s face, he sees irritation written all over it. “What do you want, Percy,” he says, through carefully clenched teeth. 

“Hey, Neeks. And Will. What’re you doing he—? Oh.  _ Oh . . .”  _ Percy says, like he’s just had some grand revelation. Will blinks at him in incomprehension. Nico quietly steams. 

“Can you please go bother Annabeth. Or Leo. You know, one of the people who  _ caused  _ this mess,” Nico says with a pointed glare, and Will blinks again, this time in discomfort. He glances between the two, incredibly aware that there’s something going on here that he knows nothing about. What mess? What is Nico talking about?  _ Why  _ is Percy covered in green goo, and why is it starting to smell like burning acid in here? 

“Uh,” Percy says, and cringes like he already knows what he’s about to say is not going to be very well-received. “Well, I’d love to do that, but I can’t. Annabeth’s on a weekend trip to Alcatraz with her dad, and tonight Leo’s with Jason and Piper, and last time I ruined one of their sleepovers, Leo sicced his metal dragon on me. Also, I don’t want to ruin Mom’s night by getting gho— _ goo  _ all over the shower again, and it’s starting to burn in places that I don’t like to burn so  _ can I please please please use your shower please Nico please?”  _

Percy pulls out the puppy dog eyes. Will isn’t sure if it’s the eyes that do it, or the uncomfortable dance he’s started doing, probably unconsciously, but after a moment of harsh staring on Nico’s part, he gives in with a sigh. “Fine,” he grumbles, and slouches back into the couch with a tired throwing-up of hands. Percy lets out a very audible sigh of relief, and then he sprints up the stairs and disappears. Nico pinches the bridge of his nose like he has a headache. 

“I am so sorry about him,” he says, in the voice of someone who is deeply tired. And Will frowns for a moment, wondering how often your boyfriend has to show up covered in suspicious goos in order to make you sound  _ that  _ done with the whole ordeal. He thinks he would be pretty worried if he had a boyfriend who showed up in his living room looking like  _ that.  _ He wonders, for a concerned moment, if they’re having problems. He hopes not, for their sake. They usually seem so happy together. 

Well, regardless, Will knows when it’s time to take his leave. “It’s cool. I, uh, should probably be getting home though?” 

“Yeah. Probably,” Nico says, with another deep sigh. He unmolds himself from the couch to walk with Will to the door. 

“I had fun,” Will feels the sudden need to say as he’s shrugging on his coat. 

“Yeah?” Some of that tiredness in Nico’s face fades, and a little shine of that bright smile peeks through. “Would you say you’d like to do it again, sometime?” 

“Oh, definitely. We should watch all of the  _ Pirates of the Caribbean  _ movies.” 

His smile brightens just that much more. Will is melting. “Yeah. And then maybe that awful movie you were talking about before.” 

“No, definitely not,” tears out of Will’s mouth automatically—practically an immune response. He doesn’t remember much about that movie, and he’d like for it to stay that way. Nico laughs, the sound ringing like the notes of a beautiful, ethereal instrument. 

“Well, we’ll figure something out,” Nico says. The door is open now, and he steps in close when Will turns to say goodbye to him on the porch. They stare at each other for a long moment, so close, close enough that Will thinks, he could so easily lean in and . . . 

_ And  _ that’s his cue to go. “Goodnight, Nico,” he says softly, and Nico steps back, smile dimming, but only slightly. 

“Night, Will,” he says back. With a final, beautiful flash of his smile, Nico closes the door, and Will finds himself alone in the cold. 

He’s warm down to his toes all the way home. 

  
  


_____

  
  


“So, like. What’s with all the ghost jokes?” Will curiously asks. He’s been wondering for a while, but no appropriate time has really presented itself until now. 

He’s sitting on a worn but clearly well-loved sofa in the Jackson-Blofis’s living room, and yes, as in Professor Blofis. Apparently, he’s Percy’s stepdad. Percy is at the other end, bouncing his adorable baby sister on his knees, and the space where Nico was sitting is empty because he got up to use the bathroom a minute ago. There is Christmas music playing in the background. 

“Ah, it’s kind of a running . . . thing,” Percy says, and that doesn’t really clear anything up, but then he looks up from Estelle to Will with a smile and elaborates, “Kind of a lot to explain, but basically it has something to do with my job.” 

“Your job?” Will blinks. Part of him wonders what the heck his job would have to do with ghosts, but what he ends up saying is, “I didn’t know you had a job.” 

Percy’s mouth quirks, like Will has just said something funny. “Yeah, not many people do. You could say it takes up a large portion of my life outside of school, though. Last year I got really, uh,  _ busy _ with it, and my grades slipped. Hence why I’m retaking  _ English III _ with you and Neeks.” 

“Oh. And your parents still let you keep working?” 

Estelle emits a sudden, excited  _ guh!  _ and throws her fist in the air, and Percy coos at her for a moment before he replies. “I had to beg, but yeah. My job is pretty important to me, and they get that. But if my grades go under again I have to quit, hence why I spend so much time studying with the others. They help me stay focused, what with the ADHD and whatnot.” 

“Oh,” Will says again. He shifts on his hands, mentally debating with himself, and then makes a decision. “About that—” 

“I’m back,” Nico announces, and climbs over the back of the sofa to land between them. “My house didn’t fall down, did it?” 

The three of them both turn their gazes to the coffee table in front of them, where Nico’s meticulously put-together gingerbread house is standing in all its glory. The multicolored lights from the Christmas tree cast colorful dots over it, which Will thinks is a festive touch. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone successfully put together a gingerbread house,” Will says thoughtfully. Back home, he and one of his younger sisters had made a valiant attempt once, but an  _ attempt  _ was all it had been. Thinking about that makes his heart hurt, so he puts the memory away for now. 

Percy snorts. “Well,  _ this  _ is nothing. Nico and Reyna have this ongoing gingerbread-building competition that they do on Christmas. Last year, Nico made my apartment complex.” 

Will raises an eyebrow. “Impressive.” But the smaller of the darker-haired boys shakes his head and scowls. 

“Reyna made the Empire State Building,” he grumbles sourly. And, well. Will doesn’t know what to say to that. It seems like a sore spot for Nico, though, so he politely decides to leave it. 

Percy appears to be on the same page. “So, Will. Any plans for Christmas?”

Will hesitates. Christmas is only a week away, and he still hasn’t gotten a phone call from his mother. She hasn’t spoken to him at all since the night he left—when she swore to him that she wouldn’t again unless he  _ “came to his senses.”  _ Knowing his mother and her stubbornness, he knows that she wasn’t speaking in hyperboles. He wouldn’t be surprised if he never spoke to her again. 

Still, there had been a part of him that hoped she would call, and she would say something like:  _ I know we didn’t leave things on the best of terms, but you’re still family, and I want you to be here for Christmas.  _ Christmas is such a  _ big deal  _ to their family, and being kicked out of it like that—well. Will supposes that’s why they call it getting kicked out, isn’t it? 

It stings. It’s this pressing weight in Will’s lungs, like they’re slowly filling with lead-infused water, and it makes him so  _ sad.  _ But he clears his throat, because he’s not about to go and ruin the festive mood with his problems, and he smiles. 

“I think Kayla said something about going to Rockefeller Center? Or I don’t know, we might stay in and watch movies. My aunt Artemis is supposed to be coming.” 

“Oh fun,” Percy says brightly. “Well, I bet you’ll have a good time.  _ Oh,  _ I have to go get your present before you leave! Here, take this.” He plops Estelle into his lap and runs off, and Will stares down at the baby, and she blinks wide blue eyes up at him. He smiles, and she grins back. His heart melts into a puddle. 

“This is the most adorable shit I’ve ever seen in my life,” Nico says, and Will looks up in surprise to find Nico looking fondly back at him. There’s something so soft and warm in his face, and again Will finds himself wanting to kiss him, but he doesn’t. They just smile at each other while Percy yelps and shouts, “I’m fine!” in the background, and then Nico starts laughing, and  _ Will  _ starts laughing, and Estelle makes happy babbling noises because she doesn’t want to be left out, and honestly? Honestly, this is good enough. 

  
  


_____

  
  


Christmas Day comes and goes without a single phone call from home. He and Kayla get into a frosting war while decorating cookies, and Austin stands back and films the whole thing. Aunt Artemis brings him a special edition medical textbook that must have been  _ so expensive,  _ and she tells him to keep going after his dreams, and he almost cries. His dad tries to make homemade hot chocolate and burns it, then blames it on Aunt Artemis, and they stand there fighting like toddlers in the kitchen while Mariah Carrey sings in the background, and it’s probably the funniest thing Will has seen in a while. All in all, it’s a good day. It’s different than what he’s used to, but it  _ is _ good. 

Still, once everyone has fallen asleep in front of the TV, Will finds himself almost obsessively thinking about the radio silence from home, and his heart begins to hurt like a limb that’s fallen asleep and is slow to wake. He finds himself wondering what homemade macaroni gift the twins made for his mother this year, and if Ruth remembered to give all the animals extra, bow-shaped treats, and if his mother ended up making the special Christmas cookies that she promised she’d make this year,  _ just for him.  _

His phone vibrating pulls him out of this pool of thought, and he lifts it to see that Percy is calling him. He frowns to himself, because Percy  _ never  _ calls, and after a quick glance around to make sure everyone is still sleeping, he untangles himself from the blankets and goes into the kitchen to answer. 

“Hello?” 

_ “William!”  _ Percy’s cheerful voice rings tinnily from the phone speakers, but there’s something slightly . . . off. Will can’t put his finger on what it is.  _ “I wanted to call and—no, no Annabeth don’t eat that, I poured all of my love and dedication into decorating that, that’s  _ Frank Junior,” and Will blinks in confusion, because  _ what. “Anyway, Will, Merry Christmas!! Hope you had a good day, and also I wanted you to know Nico’s been all pouty because he misses you, and he wants to kiss you beneath mistletoe and moonlight and all that, and I  _ told  _ him he should’ve invited you but he was like, ‘no, I don’t want him to feel suffokit—suffoca— _ suffocated,’  _ that’s the word, but I told him that was stupid and—”  _

_ “Percy OH MY GODS WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO,”  _ there’s some kind of shuffling noise, and Percy yelps and says something that Will can’t quite make out because it’s muffled, and then everything goes quiet for a moment and Will wonders if he’s been hung up on, until another, too-familiar voice sighs in his ear. 

_ “I am  _ so sorry  _ about him—he had way too much contraband eggnog and he’s a lightweight.”  _ Nico sounds incredibly embarrassed, and it’s all Will can do not to laugh out loud.  _ “Hopefully he didn’t say anything too—weird.”  _

Will bites his lip, mind flitting back and repeating  _ he wants to kiss you beneath mistletoe and moonlight,  _ and he almost says something about that, because why would Percy say something like that about his own boyfriend, but his cheeks turn uncomfortably warm at the thought and knowing him, he’d open his own mouth and say something incriminating. And he  _ wouldn’t  _ have the excuse of being drunk on eggnog to fall back on. 

“Nothing too weird,” he decides, and Nico heaves a sigh of relief. Will can almost feel the phantom breeze of it against his ear. 

_ “Thank the gods. Well—anyway, hi,” _ Nico says, and it sounds like he’s smiling now, and Will smiles back as if on instinct. 

“Hi,” he says back, and hopes he doesn’t sound  _ too  _ sappy. There’s only so much emotion that can be betrayed in a single word, after all. 

_ “How’s your Christmas been?”  _

“Pretty good. We had good food and laughed a lot.” Will’s smile turns a shade of fond that doesn’t really have much to do with Nico, then, and more to do with his own family. “How was yours?” 

_ “Good, it was good.”  _ There’s silence for a heartbeat, and Will wonders if it’s his turn to initiate the conversation, or if he should just say goodbye. And then Nico says, almost in a single breath:  _ “We’re having a party on New Year’s. You should come.”  _

Will doesn’t even have to think about it. “I’d love to.” 

_ “Well, great.”  _ And Nico is definitely smiling, now—Will’s not quite sure when he got this good at reading Nico’s voice, but he  _ knows _ he is.  _ “I’ll text you the time and everything.”  _

“Okay. Cool.” 

_ “Well uh, goodnight then? I’d better help get Percy to bed before he hurts himself,”  _ Nico says, and Will snorts at the image of Nico and probably Annabeth dragging their tall, lanky friend to bed like he’s a child. 

“Yeah, good luck with that. And goodnight, Nico. Merry Christmas.” 

_ “Merry Christmas.”  _ The sound of their breathing continues for a moment after that, and then the line goes dead. 

Will is still smiling when he crawls back into the blanket nest. Kayla peels one eye open, takes one look at him, and snorts. 

“You’re besotted,” she mumbles, and then falls instantly back asleep. Will stays awake for a long time, smiling up at the ceiling, and thinks:  _ I really am, aren’t I?  _

  
  


_____

  
  


“Hold up.” Percy freezes, bottle of water halfway to his lips, and then puts it back down. He squints at Will as if to see if he’s joking or not, and then realizes he’s not, and his face goes deathly serious. “What do you mean, you’re spending your birthday by  _ yourself?”  _

And then suddenly the entire lunch table is staring at him. Percy’s friend Grover looks at him like he’s just been shot. 

“It’s really not a big deal,” Will tries to say, even though his heart  _ is  _ kind of heavy at the thought of spending his eighteenth birthday alone. But his dad couldn’t get out of work, and Kayla has this big archery thing that she’s had planned for  _ months  _ and Austin is going with her. So they’re going to celebrate the day before, and that’s the thing that really matters, anyway. It’s not the day itself so much as spending time with the people who love you. And Will’s made his peace with it, really. He doesn’t need his friends to feel bad for him. 

“Yeah, um, I don’t know how you guys do things in Texas,” Piper speaks up, and points at him with a fork-speared tomato, “but here, we don’t let friends celebrate their birthdays alone. I’m going to throw you a party.” 

Will shifts uncomfortably. “I don’t know, Piper. I don’t really like big affairs—and I wouldn’t want you to feel like you have to go to that kind of trouble—” but she waves him off. 

“Please. You are the  _ least  _ trouble-making person in our group. And I’ll keep the guest list small, okay? Just the gang and maybe a couple of your other friends. You hang out with that purple-haired girl sometimes, right?” 

“Her name’s Lou Ellen,” Will says, and then thinks about it for another moment, and sighs. It’s not like he has anything else planned, anyway. And it  _ does  _ sound better than being home alone. “Alright, fine. But  _ please, _ keep it small. I don’t want one of those terrible teenage romcom moments where they  _ say  _ the party is going to be small, and then it’s gigantic and I have a panic attack in the bathroom.” 

It’s the first time he’s openly alluded to his anxiety, and he freezes for a moment until he feels a hand settle onto his shoulder. It’s Nico, and he’s smiling his soft,  _ melt the ice from your frozen New York bones _ smile, and Will instantly feels a thousand times more reassured. “Piper wouldn’t do that,” he says confidently. “You’ll have fun.” 

And, well. How could Will  _ not  _ believe him? 

So on Saturday night, Will stands in his bedroom and chooses his clothes without the help of his sister. It probably shouldn’t feel like a milestone, but it kind of does; he carefully selects the expensive-looking, cloud-soft sweater that Piper got him for Christmas, and he looks at himself in the mirror and doesn’t feel the need to change once. He likes the way the blue matches his eyes, and he thinks suddenly that Kayla was wrong about his legs being his best feature. 

And he’s all ready to go: keys and phone and wallet in his pockets, all of the lights flipped off, the entire house silent save for the hum of the thermostat and the traffic outside, about five seconds away from stepping out the door when his phone rings. 

Nearly jumping, Will takes his hand off the doorknob and pulls his phone out of his pocket. It’s an all-too-familiar contact name, and his heart leaps into his throat in anxiety. His hand trembles when he swipes to answer, and he holds it up to his ear, trying to tamp down the feeling that he’s going to throw up. 

“Mama?” 

_ “William,”  _ the cool voice of his mother greets him for the first time in four months.  _ “There’s something I need to speak to you about.”  _

“Um. Okay.” Will takes a few steps back until his hand fetches up on the side of the island in the kitchen, and he fumbles to sit down on one of the bar stools. 

_ “Okay, what?”  _

Will bites his lip. “Okay, Ma’am.” 

_ “Good.”  _ Will waits, heart pounding, and he’s not sure yet whether he should be hopeful or afraid. It’s a good thing that his mother has never been one for beating around the bush.  _ “Well, William, since you’ve been with your father all these months, I can only assume that you have made your decision to not return to this family. Naturally, this means that you no longer have any claim on anything tied to us. I thought it would be best to tell you now, before you go and start making your college plans, that Mark and I have decided to divide your savings between Ruth and the twins. It will certainly help, what with the constant rise in university tuition.”  _

“Wait. What?” Will’s heart stops. “What are you talking about? I—why would you do that? I put my  _ own  _ money into that account too—that’s not  _ just  _ yours. You can’t do that.” 

_ “Already did, sweetheart,”  _ she says, and Will definitely thinks he’s going to throw up, now.  _ “Listen, William, this is a direct consequence of  _ your  _ actions. I’d say it’s well-deserved, as well. Breaking my heart the way you did . . . surely you can understand why that can’t be forgiven.”  _

Will chews on the inside of his cheek to give himself an ache to think about that isn’t the one in his chest.  _ What about  _ my _ heart?  _ he wonders.  _ You aren’t the only one who’s hurting because of this.  _

But he doesn’t say that—he can’t say anything; the words are stuck in his throat—and after a moment, the call ends. She’s said everything she wanted to say to him. 

Will stares blankly at the shadows cast over the darkened kitchen for a long moment, paralyzed by pain, and feels like his heart is bleeding out. 

And then his phone chimes— _ one new message from seaweed brain— _ and Will doesn’t feel much like partying anymore, but he remembers that his friends put a lot of work into making sure he has a good birthday. And Will might be a lot of things, but a bad friend is never going to be one of them, so he puts his phone back in his pocket, takes a deep breath that feels like inhaling needles, and heads out. 

_ She never said happy birthday,  _ he thinks stupidly, and it  _ shouldn’t hurt this much— _ not after everything else—but it  _ does.  _

  
  


_____

  
  


“Happy birthday!” is the first thing Nico says to him when he opens the door—wearing a T-shirt with a skeleton wearing a party hat on the front; he looks  _ adorable  _ in it—and he’s smiling until he notices the tear tracks on Will’s face, and then it drops in alarm. “Oh no, Will, what’s wrong?” he asks, and in the background Will can hear the chatter of their other friends dying down as they tune in to what’s going on.  _ Great, I’ve been here less than a minute and I’ve already ruined it,  _ he thinks, with grief-tinged bitterness. And then he bursts into a fresh batch of tears. 

“Oh, oh no,” Nico says again, voice infused with worry, and then he’s pulling Will in out of the cold and past the others, and he doesn’t know where they’re going because this is the first time he’s been to Piper’s, but he wants to be out from under the concerned and hushed whispers of their friends as quickly as possible. He’s relieved when Nico leads him through an archway to an empty kitchen and sits him down at a fancy-looking glass table. He blinks down at his reflection, taking in how gross he looks and how even if Nico was single, he would never be into him after seeing him like this, and it’s the stupidest thing to be upset over but it just makes him sniffle even harder. Nico disappears for a moment but then he’s back, setting a glass of water in front of him and then reaching out to settle a hand on Will’s shoulder. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” he quietly asks, and at first Will shakes his head because he  _ doesn’t,  _ he really doesn’t want to ruin this night even more than he already has, and he knows if he talks about it that’s just going to make it worse. But Nico’s gaze on him is so  _ patient,  _ and Will’s heart is aching so  _ much  _ and it just—it just spills out of him. 

_ All  _ of it: about struggling by himself to figure out who he is in a place where he had no one to turn to, where he was  _ afraid  _ to say anything because people already had enough reasons to talk badly about him, and they  _ did  _ talk badly about him—other students and his teachers and PTA moms at school bake sales—and he didn’t  _ want  _ any more reasons for people to think of him as different but he got so tired of lying and it just came out,  _ literally,  _ and it had been such a terrible fight, with his mother and his stepfather shouting, and he was crying, and his younger siblings had no idea what was going on but their parents were saying that he could no longer live in their house if he was going to be  _ like that,  _ and he had never seen that kind of hatred in his mother’s eyes before,  _ never,  _ and it was all directed at  _ him  _ and it was so awful, and now she’s erasing him completely like it’s that easy to cut off someone you love, like it’s  _ nothing. _ “I don’t even care about the stupid college fund. I care because i— _ it,  _ it’s like I  _ never even mattered to her,” _ he says, and his voice breaks, and then he’s full-on sobbing. 

Nico tugs him close, tucks Will’s head against his shoulder and holds him tightly, and Will should feel embarrassed but he guesses all his qualms about looking stupid around Nico went out the window a while ago. “I’m so sorry, Will,” Nico tells him, his voice heavy with pain, hurting for  _ him,  _ “You didn’t deserve that. You—you deserve so much better, okay? And I know it doesn’t make it hurt less, but we all care about you a  _ lot.  _ You matter to us. To—to  _ me.  _ So much.” 

Will can feel his heart breaking in a different way, because he  _ does,  _ doesn’t he? “You mean a lot to me, too,” he whispers, voice cracking, and pushes away to scrub the leftover tears from his face. “And uh, thanks. And—sorry about getting snot all over your skeleton shirt.” 

“It’s okay,” Nico says. He smiles, but it’s sad, and it hurts a little bit to see. Will feels a little guilty for putting that there, but he doesn’t know how to apologize for it, or if Nico would even let him. And then Nico asks, “Do you want to call off the party? I can tell everyone to go home.”

And the thought of  _ that  _ is even worse, and Will shakes his head automatically. “No, I—I’m okay now. Or, not  _ okay, _ but . . . but everyone’s already here, right? So—let’s have a party.” 

“Let’s have a party,” Nico repeats, and he smiles again, and this time it’s a little less sad, and Will thinks that he’s so in love with him. 

It’s a good night. No one asks about why he was crying when he came in, and they sit around and eat the strawberry cheesecake Leo brought while they play  _ Operation  _ (also provided by Leo). Cecil gifts Will a T-shirt that he made himself with a cartoon frog in a lab coat on the front ( _ “To replace the shirt I ruined,”  _ his curly-haired friend explains with a sheepish grin), and he just sits there and laughs at it for the longest time while everyone looks at him like he’s lost his mind. 

He’s not sure he’s ever been surrounded by so much laughter at once, but he has to say he really loves the sound of it. Nico’s arm winds around his shoulders at some point during the night, and Percy grins up at him from the floor and says, “What ghosts haunt hospitals?  _ Surgical spirits,” _ while Annabeth and Piper groan and roll their eyes, and it’s not perfect—there’s still that sad, heavy feeling pressing down on his chest, and he isn’t quite sure if it’ll ever go away—but given the circumstances, it feels pretty damn close. 

  
  


_____

  
  


Will knocks on the open door of his dad’s study, heart in his throat as he asks, “Can I come in?” 

“Of course, kiddo.” His father sets down his magazine, turns down the volume on the  _ Fleetwood Mac _ album he’s been blasting all day, and flashes a blinding white smile at him. “What can I do for ya? Do you need girl advice? Boy advice? How-to-get-giant-ants-to-stop-following-you-everywhere advice?” 

“Um.” Will blinks, wondering about that last one, and then decides he doesn’t want to know. “None of those. Actually, I wanted to ask you about college.” 

Apollo hums. “Well, actually my advice might not be too great, on that front. You know I’ve never been much of a scholar—but I’ll do my best.” 

“Well, it’s not really  _ advice _ I’m looking for exactly . . .” Will chews on his lip for a moment, then exhales slowly, and explains. “My mother, um—she took away my college funds. And I . . .  _ really  _ hate to ask, because you’ve already given me so much—and I  _ swear  _ I’ll pay you back,” he says, already stumbling over his words, and forces himself to slow down and take another deep breath. “But I was wondering if, if you could help me out any? Because I’m going to be applying to schools soon, and I just—I have to know, like, what I’m going to do, and if I need to start saving up, then I have to look for a job, and—

“Will,” his dad cuts him off mid-ramble, an uncharacteristically serious look on his face. “Did Naomi not tell you about the savings I put aside for you?” 

“I, uh.” Will frowns. “No?” 

_ “Di immortales,”  _ Apollo curses under his breath, and pinches the bridge of his nose with his fingers. And then he folds both hands on top of the desk and looks right at Will. 

“I am aware,” he begins slowly, “that I haven’t exactly been a model father. When you were born, I was nowhere near emotionally mature or available enough to be an adequate parent, and your mother knew this, and  _ I  _ knew it too. But your grandmother Leto would have  _ killed  _ me if I was a deadbeat, and that’s if Artemis didn’t get to me first. Will—you don’t have to worry about college. The money is there, in an account that only  _ you  _ can touch, and I will never take that away from you. Do you understand?” 

“Uh,” Will says again, because that’s pretty much the only thing he’s capable of thinking. “I don’t think I do.” 

If Apollo had set aside money for college for him, then  _ why,  _ he wonders, have his mother and stepfather spent the past three years reminding him how expensive medical school is going to be, and how even  _ with  _ the money they saved for him, he’s still definitely going to have to come up with the rest himself? That’s why he’d spent summers and weekends working,  _ all  _ of it going towards a future that they’d never really believed he would get to, and he’d never heard a single thing out of his mother about Apollo. Of course, his mother rarely ever spoke of his dad to begin with—he doesn’t really know the full story there, but he can only assume it wasn’t exactly a fairytale—but still, he thinks, she  _ would have  _ mentioned it. Wouldn’t she? 

There is so much that Will doesn’t understand. The more he learns, the  _ less  _ things make sense. 

And here’s Apollo, telling him: “If the only good thing I ever do as a parent is help you get to your dream in whatever way I can, then by the gods, I am going to do it. You’ve been telling me over the phone for years that all you want to do with your life is save people.  _ How  _ could I ever deny you that?” 

Will’s eyes are burning, just a little. He says in a low, slightly rough voice, “I—I didn’t think that you were ever really listening.” 

“Of course I was listening.” His dad’s eyes flash, deeper than the sky but lighter than the sea, and for the first time, Will thinks that he can see himself in them. And he straightens his posture, meets the blue with his own, and promises: “I won’t let it go to waste, Dad. I’ll be the best doctor the world has ever seen.” 

“You have never been, and will never be a waste,” Apollo says carefully, and then he smiles, with the sort of burning confidence that Will  _ wants  _ to see in himself someday, and says, “But I do not doubt you.” 

  
  


_____

  
  


**seaweed brain:**

**(1:43 AM)** **_SOS. need help at neeks ASAP_ **

**(1:43 AM)** **_no srsly he might be dyingg_ **

**(1:44 AM)** **_will bring ur nerdy first-aid kit. i hope u kno how 2 stitches_ **

Will squints groggily at his phone screen, reading the texts once, twice, and then shooting up in bed. Alarm lances through his chest as he types away at his screen with one hand, already sliding out of his blankets and into a pair of jeans. 

**(1:46 AM)** **_Do I need to call 911?_ **

His reply comes as he’s shrugging on a hoodie. 

**seaweed brain:**

**(1:47 PM)** **_no, just u. it’s actuallyy not that bad and nicos a bby when it comes 2 hospitals. he trusts u tho_ **

Will is too worried to let a small place in his heart feel warmed by that. He grabs his first-aid kit on his way downstairs, making sure to be as quiet as possible so he won’t wake anyone else in the house up, and hopes that Apollo won’t mind him borrowing his car without asking. 

Nico’s front door is unlocked and the lights in the windows upstairs are on, so Will lets himself in and takes the stairs two at a time. He follows the light down the hall to an open doorway, hears the sound of a familiar voice complaining, and his heart settles down in his chest a little bit as he thinks:  _ oh good, he’s still alive.  _

“I am  _ fine,”  _ Nico is protesting when Will steps into the room, swatting away Percy’s hand as he’s reaching to press his palm against his forehead. Percy looks up then, sees Will standing there, and sighs in relief. “Oh thank gods. Here— _ you  _ deal with him.” 

“What happened?” Will says as he moves over to where Nico is sitting at the end of his bed, eyes clinically scanning until he finds the three deep gashes in the other boy’s upper arm. He immediately gets to work, popping open his first-aid kit and reaching for the bottle of antiseptic, while Nico insists, “Nothing,” and Percy says, “We’ll explain later.” 

Will nods, accepting that answer for now, and frowns down at the wound as he cleans it. It looks like something made by some kind of large, wild animal. It’s pretty deep—Percy was right in assuming that Nico needs stitches. 

“I’ve never actually done stitches on a person,” Will says lightly as he tosses the bloodied cotton balls and gloves into the nearby wastebasket. “How much do you trust me?” 

“Enough to let you do stitches on me, clearly,” Nico says, and Will smiles at that as Hazel sweeps into the room. “Moral support is here,” she announces, “and also a glass of water.” She sets it down on the bedside table, sits next to Nico at the foot of the bed, and takes his hand. Percy gawks at her, offended. 

_ “Hey,  _ I was moral support. What do you think I am, a ghost?” 

“Yes,” she says blandly, and Will snorts. He pulls on a new pair of medical gloves, readies the needle and surgical thread, and recalls every single fact about giving stitches that he knows. Nico, for his part, seems completely impartial as Will gets started, and it’s only after the first couple stitchings that Will realizes he’s clenching his teeth. 

“Remind me to never get a tattoo, no matter how cool I think they look,” he says, and Hazel rolls her eyes. “You’re such a baby.” 

_ “Right,”  _ Percy chimes. Nico narrows his eyes. “You’re both awful moral support.” 

“You’re doing great,” Will says encouragingly. Nico smiles at him, bordering on sappy, and Will has to look back down so he doesn’t accidentally stab him. 

Approximately twenty painstaking minutes later, Will’s stitches look exactly like every textbook photo and finished video product he’s ever seen, and he’s drowsy from the painkillers, but Will at least thinks he didn’t lose so much blood that they should be worried. “He probably just needs a lot of sleep now,” he remarks, as the three of them are looking down at the now passed-out form of their friend. Hazel covers him with a blanket, and they step outside. 

Will looks at Percy and raises an eyebrow. “Are you going to explain now?”

Percy gazes up at the ceiling for a long moment, and then he sighs and nods. “Yeah. It’s time,” he says gravely, and Will wonders why he sounds so dramatic. It’s not like they’re characters in a cartoon series or something. 

“Hey, Hazel, can we use your coffee maker? I get the feeling it’s going to be a long night,” Percy says, and the curly-haired girl rolls her eyes again. “Like you have to ask,” she says fondly, and then she kisses him on the cheek, and then she kisses  _ Will  _ on the cheek, and bids them, “Goodnight, dorks.” 

Percy nods his head in the direction of the stairs and Will follows, not quite sure what to expect, but with the deep-rooted feeling that it’s something very, very strange.

  
  


_____

  
  


So apparently, Will’s friends are characters in a cartoon series. 

Their lives involve a lab accident, suspicious and weird powers that no one fully understands, and fighting crime in all of their spare time. That job Percy was talking about? He’s a ghost-hunter. He  _ and Nico  _ are ghost-hunters. Crime-fighting ghost hunters. Who can also turn into ghosts. 

Suddenly, all of Percy’s ghost jokes make a little more sense. And the name of their group chat. And the fact that Hazel had pretty much just told Will that Percy was a ghost while he was giving her brother stitches. 

“So, wait.” Will only has one question. Well, okay, he has a few questions, but this might be the most important one. “Does that mean you’re . . . dead?” 

Percy hums, contemplative. They’re sitting at Nico’s kitchen table, and Will is drinking coffee out of a mug with a cartoon ghost on the front that reads: _ Not a ghost, but dead inside.  _ “I don’t think so? I mean, it happened over a year ago, but Nico and I have kept growing. Like, he was still super short when it happened—he was  _ adorable . . .  _ don’t know what happened, there. And we’re not ghosts all the time, just like, when we need to fight something. Or when we’re too lazy to walk upstairs, sometimes we float through the ceiling.” 

Will quirks an eyebrow. Part of him is beginning to wonder if this whole conversation is brought on by sleep-deprivation and he’s just imagined the whole thing. So, in a logical fashion, he says, “Prove it. Turn into a ghost.” 

So, with a shrug, Percy  _ does.  _

He closes his eyes like he’s meditating, brow furrowing slightly as, Will assumes, he focuses all his energy into going ghost. And then there’s a flash of green light, and Percy is floating in front of him: white-haired, with a torso that tapers off into a tail like the Genie from  _ Aladdin  _ instead of legs, and glowing green eyes. Will’s mouth goes dry. “Huh . . . yeah, that’s pretty convincing.” 

“Right?” Percy agrees. He turns back into a human boy and bows before sitting back down. “Anyway, yeah. So that’s the story.” 

“And everyone knows? Like—all your friends and parents and stuff?” 

“Not all of our friends. Like, Rachel  _ suspects  _ something, but we don’t hang out enough for her to really care. Annabeth and Leo obviously know, because it’s  _ their  _ science-fair project that turned us this way. And my mom started getting suspicious after the third time I ruined her porcelain tub with ghost guts, so . . .” Percy shrugs again. “It’s whatever. We try to keep it on the down-low though outside of our close family and friends, because we’d really like to avoid becoming science experiments in a government lab before we graduate high school at least. So if you don’t mind . . . ?” 

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Will says. Like he’d ever betray his friends like that. 

It’s only then that he thinks to look at the clock, and realizes just how late it is. “Shoot—I should probably be getting home. My dad doesn’t know I took the car.” 

“Oh, right.” Understanding crosses Percy’s face. “Look, dude, thanks so much for coming.” 

“It was nothing.” Will smiles and gathers up his stuff, shoving his phone in his pocket, making sure his keys are still there. “Just make sure your boyfriend’s hydrated and resting and all that, and that he doesn’t push himself so hard next time. And now that I know about your whole ghost thing, feel free to call me anytime something like this happens again. I’m sure it happens a lot.” 

“Wait,” Percy says, “Boyfriend?” 

Will raises an eyebrow at him. “Well, yeah. Did you think I didn’t know?” Percy blinks owlishly at him, and Will figures that he must just be tired from the long night. “Anyway, ‘night, Perce.” 

“Um. Goodnight,” Percy calls after him. Will sees himself out, shutting the door behind him with the perfect comedic timing to miss the way Percy says,  _ “WHAT,”  _ to the empty kitchen, as if the still-gurgling coffee machine is going to answer him. 

  
  


_____

  
  


The doorbell rings halfway through dinner, and Will pauses with a forkful halfway to his mouth to glance around. Austin is arguing with Apollo over the absolute need to know how to read sheet music versus tablature in order to play the guitar properly, and Kayla is playing some kind of choose-your-own-story game on her phone. “Okay,” he says to the room at large, “I guess I’ll get it, then.” 

To his surprise, it’s Nico standing there, and he looks deeply, viscerally ticked off.  _ Oh, shit,  _ Will thinks before he can stop himself, and then just lets it stay there. “Uh . . . hey, Nico,” he ventures. 

_ “DoyouthinkthatPercyandIaredating?” _ Nico says through clenched teeth, and it takes Will a good minute to piece apart the words. But they still don’t make any sense, and he stares there and blinks at Nico, confused about what the problem could possibly be here. “Aren’t you?” 

_ “NO,”  _ Nico cries, and throws his hands in the air. “I am  _ not  _ dating Percy Jackson. I mean, I had a crush on him once like, a million years ago, but I have since then come to my senses. Percy is  _ not  _ my type, and I  _ cannot believe  _ that this whole time, you thought I was dating him.” 

Will has no idea what to say to this. His heart is beating curiously in his chest, almost daring to hope.  _ Calm down,  _ he tells it, and it works, until—

“Is  _ that _ why you didn’t kiss me that night at my house?” he demands. Suddenly Will’s heart is running at marathon-rates, and he can feel all three sets of his family members’ eyes turning to watch the scene unfolding by their front door. 

“You and Percy are my friends. No way was I going to ruin your relationship. I mean, not that I’d intentionally ruin someone’s relationship  _ anyway . . .”  _ Will hesitates. “I’m not making this better, am I?” 

“You,” Nico declares, stepping into his space, “are an idiot. An unbelievable, adorable,  _ ridiculously smart idiot,  _ and I am going to kiss you now.” 

“Okay,” Will barely has time to squeak, and it’s  _ so  _ embarrassing, and he almost apologizes, but then Nico’s pressing his chapsticked-lips against his and Will loses his ability to think. 

He’s there and then he’s gone, and Will laments the warmth as soon as Nico releases him. “I have to go,” he says regretfully, and Will regrets it too, until, “but I had to come by and do that first. I’ll see you Monday?” 

“Um, yes. I will . . . see you,” Will says. He feels a little dizzy, but in a really good way. He wishes Nico would kiss him again. 

There’s a little smile toying at the corners of Nico’s mouth, and then he does exactly that. He kisses him again, and then he says, “Bye, Will. Bye, Will’s family,” and with a little wave of his fingers at Will’s dad and siblings, he’s gone. 

Will closes the door and returns to the table in a daze. Kayla snickers, but he can see real pride in her eyes when she says, “I knew you’d get there eventually.” 

Will is still trying to process what just happened. “. . . I have no idea what just happened,” he confesses. And Kayla smiles, and Austin scoffs, and Apollo just nods like this is a perfectly normal thing to say after a perfectly normal interruption occurs during a family dinner. 

“Don’t worry, Will. You’ll figure it out,” his dad says, and smiles, and Will smiles back and thinks:  _ you know what? I think that I will.  _

  
  


_____

  
  


It makes a hilarious story for lunch on Monday. Everyone laughs so hard and for so long that Will worries that they’re going to get kicked out of the cafeteria. But they don’t, and Piper and Percy sit there scrubbing tears from their eyes for the longest time, and Nico looks vaguely annoyed but his arm is slung over Will’s shoulder, and every now and then he’ll shoot him these soft, private smiles, and Will melts into a puddle every time. 

“I have to admit, that was even more surprising than the whole ghost thing,” Will confesses with a quiet smile of his own, and that sends Percy cracking up again, but Nico just straightens up a little and goes:  _ “Oh,  _ by the way, we’re going ghost-hunting this weekend. You want to come?” and Will isn’t even sure if he believed in ghosts until a couple days ago, but he can’t lie and say he isn’t curious to watch his boyfriend _ —his boyfriend— _ in action. So he says, “Sure, why not?” and watches the way Nico’s smile lights up his whole face, and then Leo starts fake gagging and saying,  _ “Cuteness overload,”  _ until Nico throws his empty water bottle at him. 

The bell rings, and they all start getting their stuff together; Jason and Piper call out their, “See ya later!’s” and Annabeth walks away with her nose buried in a book and Percy’s arm over her shoulders, guiding her around the swarms of other teenagers like the dutiful boyfriend he is—and  _ of course,  _ Will didn’t figure out that Percy and Annabeth have been dating this whole time; he really  _ is  _ kind of an idiot sometimes, isn’t he? He says this to Nico and Nico just wrinkles his nose up, shakes his head and fondly says, “It’s because you dedicate so much time to being book-smart—sometimes you miss what’s really going on around you. Guess it’s up to me to teach you how to live a little, huh?” 

And Will thinks it’s funny, because his boyfriend can turn into a literal  _ ghost,  _ but he smiles back and he kisses him because he  _ can  _ and then he says, “I guess you don’t have a choice,” and neither of them has any complaints about that. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: i am not a doctor and do not know anything about doctor things. if you ever find yourself needing stitches for any reason, please do not call your friends in the middle of the night unless it is to ask them to drive you to a hospital. always seek professional medical care kids. 
> 
> thanks for reading!! please drop kudos and comments if you enjoyed, as i love validation. and stay safe everyone <33


End file.
